August 24, 200916 yr British tourist trapped in French town hall after mistaking 'Hotel de Ville' for place to stay By Peter Allen Last updated at 4:30 PM on 23rd August 2009 Comments (2) Add to My Stories An English woman spent a night locked in a French town hall after thinking a ‘Hotel de Ville’ was a place you could pay for a room for the night. The disastrous linguistic mistake happened in the Alsace town of Dannemarie, on the border with Germany, at the weekend. The woman - an unnamed university graduate in her 30s - arrived late on Friday night telling locals that she wanted somewhere to stay. Oops: A British woman looking for a place to stay ended up spending the night in a Hotel de Ville, like this one, in France's Alsace town of Dannemarie They pointed her in the direction of a street full of hotels close to the town hall which - as in civic centres across France - has a big sign reading ‘Hotel de Ville’ across the front. As all students of French, including many English schoolchildren, know it is the place where officials run the town. ‘This woman thought something very different,’ said Paul Mumbach, the mayor of Dannemarie. ‘She got to the town hall on Friday night after asking people where should could stay for the night. 'We had a meeting of various officials going on in an upstairs room so the front door was initially open and lights were on. 'With hindsight, many remember hearing noises in a ground floor room but did not think much about it. ‘The woman had wandered in to the toilets to begin with, and then presumably started trying to find a receptionist. 'When one didn’t appear she started wandering around and soon realised she was locked in. ‘She started shouting "Help! Let me out!" at the top of her voice, and then started switching the lights on and off to try and alert attention. ‘When nobody arrived she settled down on one of the sofas in the town hall reception and stayed there.’ Mr Mumbach finally rescued the woman on Saturday morning after he opened the building up at around 9am. He said: ‘On opening the door I came face to face with this young woman of about 30. She told me in English that she had been looking for a hotel. We politely informed her of her mistake, and she continued with her holiday.’ Mr Mumbach said there were no plans to charge the woman, who was believed to be a graduate who spoke ‘some French’, for her stay. A spokesman for the local tourist office said: ‘Dannemarie has plenty of excellent hotels, but this woman clearly thought the impressive building in the centre of town was the best one. ‘People make all kinds of linguistic mistakes when on holiday but this was a particularly unfortunate one.’ A similar situation in Barcelona, Spain, a few years ago saw English football fans ordering dozens of beers in a bar because it was ‘Frio’. They thought it was free, but ‘frio’ is in fact the Spanish word for ‘cold’ Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1208476/British-tourist-trapped-French-town-hall-mistaking-Hotel-Ville-place-stay.html#ixzz0P5JuaLMs
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